We feel like sharing with you this interesting article we have found in the Financial Times, on the continuing link between access to certain professions and social class. The article obviously concerns the UK, but we’d be very interested to have your reactions and some comments about the situation in your own countries…

“Researchers have discovered a “class pay gap” in Britain’s professional jobs: people from working-class backgrounds earn less than their peers even when they have the same levels of experience and education.
The government’s Social Mobility Commission, which published the research, said it showed that working-class people faced barriers to “getting on” in professional jobs as well as to “getting in” to them. Academics from UCL and LSE universities analysed official labour market data on the earnings and socio-economic backgrounds of people in professional and managerial jobs.

They found that those from working-class backgrounds earned 17 per cent, or £6,800 a year, less than people whose parents had professional jobs. This gap was partly explained by differences in experience, job role and education, such as the level and classification of their university degree. However, even when all those factors were taken into account, people from working-class backgrounds still earned an average 7 per cent, or £2,242, less than their peers.

The academics said that more research was needed to investigate the reasons for this gap. They speculated that people from poorer backgrounds might be less likely to ask for pay rises, or had less access to work networks and opportunities. They also raised the possibility that employers were penalising people from poorer backgrounds, either through “outright discrimination or snobbery” or via “more subtle processes of favouritism or ‘cultural-matching’, whereby elite employers misrecognise social and cultural traits rooted in middle-class backgrounds as signals of merit and talent”.

Last year, the Institute for Fiscal Studies think-tank published similar findings on the pay of recent graduates. Using anonymised tax data and student loan records for 260,000 students up to 10 years after graduation, the IFS found that graduates from richer family backgrounds earned about 10 per cent more than their poorer peers, even after completing the same degrees at the same universities.

Alan Milburn, chair of the Social Mobility Commission, said that the latest research on the “class pay gap” in the professions highlighted a “deeply elitist society”. “Many professional firms are doing excellent work to open their doors to people from all backgrounds, but this research suggests much more needs to be done to ensure that Britain is a place where everyone has an equal chance of success regardless of where they have come from,” he said.

The government, together with some large employers, has focused its social mobility efforts so far on the recruitment process. Last year, a group of public and private sector organisations, which employ about 1.8m between them, agreed to use “name-blind” recruitment for graduates and apprentices after a push by David Cameron’s government.

Some companies like Deloitte have also changed their selection processes so recruiters do not know where candidates went to school or university. However, Neil Carberry, director of people and skills policy at the CBI business lobby group, said that the “class pay gap” research showed that it was not enough to focus only on recruitment. “This is a timely reminder that social mobility is about both access to the professions and progression within them,” he said. “Everyone, regardless of background, should be given opportunities to progress to their fullest potential.”

On the question of access to the professions, the researchers found “clear grounds for optimism” in some sectors. While Britain’s traditional professions are still dominated by those from advantaged backgrounds (only 6 per cent of doctors are from working-class backgrounds, for example), technical professions such as engineering and IT are more open. Indeed, the clear majority of people who work in them are not from professional families.”

Financial Times 26/01/2017, author Sarah O’Connor